A sad smile. “You told me yourself, grandfather: we have an indulgence, because of what we do. Who we are.”
Yeah. ‘Cause Sami and her, they were just itinerants like Mom and Dad, riding ‘round from town to town in a series of stolen cars, dodging Feds and killing things out the back. But the Maartensbecks were Templars, for real, Vatican giftbags included...and for all Dee’d found herself thinking must be nice, earlier on, maybe it wasn’t so much. Not the way Ruhel made it sound.
“Sympathetic magic,” Sami murmured, to which Chatwin snorted.
“Or some-such,” she replied. “Ain’t religion grand?”
They looked up to find Anapurna glaring at them both, eyes wild enough to make Dee automatically reach for her drop-piece, the little .22 she kept holstered up one sleeve. Hissing, as she juiced the Professor twice more, in quick succession: “Did she tell you to stop?”
“Do not keep in mind, O Lord, our offenses or those of our parents, nor take vengeance on our sins,” Sami replied, not skipping a beat, while Maks Maartensbeck—him, increasingly, rather than the terrible force that had driven his frail form hither and yon these forty-plus years, gulping down anything stupid enough to come near—shuddered at her feet. “Lift this sufferer like Lazarus, out of the grave. Bring him forth, whole once more. ”
“Restore him,” Chatwin agreed. “Change his gall for blood, corruption for health. Set him free.”
“This we pray: liberate him from the mouth of the Abyss, ex inferis, in nomine patris, et filis—”
“—Et Spiritus Sanctii,” they all chimed in on this last part, seemingly without premeditation: Ruhel, Dee, Ana. Dee glanced down herself as she said it, eyes drawn back to the sheer spectacle of the professor’s—Jesus, who knew, at this point: salvation, ruination. One out of the other, out the back and right back in, straight on through ‘til morning...
Saw his lips move, whitening, firming. Saw his wounds begin to bleed, first clear, then red. And heard him gasp as the pain came rushing in, at last—a torrent of it, others’ as well as his own, deferred almost half a hundred years. The pain, so long forgotten, of being merely human.
“Ruhel...” he managed, just barely, but she heard it; fell to her knees in the mess at the sound, all uncaring of her lovely suit, and hugged him so hard he screamed. Exclaiming, as she did: “It worked, oh God, you’re cured. I knew it would. Oh, grandfather...”
Anapurna, boot still on his back and her gun leveled between his shoulderblades, seemed unconvinced, but Ruhel laughed and wept like a child; Dee wanted to look somewhere else, but was sort of starved for options. The professor, meanwhile, took it just as long as he could before gingerly shifting back, Taser’s cable dragging painfully between them. And—
“No, Ruhel,” he managed, lips twisting wry over a mouthful of newly-blunted teeth. “It...simply won’t do, you know.”
“Grandfather?”
“Oh my girl, you know it won’t. Look around you. Someone has to pay for...all this.”
She shook her head, shamed, dumb. Put a hand up to stop him speaking only to have him print a kiss onto her palm, so light and sweet it made her groan out loud, then fold to sag against him, sobbing against his frail, torn chest. He patted her awkwardly with the arm that wasn’t left hanging, Dee’s blade still stuck through it, and addressed the others over her shoulder, head turning in a short half-circle to them in turn—Sami and Chatwin, Dee, Anapurna. “Ladies,” he began, visibly exhausted, “there is...so much I must leave unsaid, and for that...I apologize, most of all for how quickly I must discard this gift you’ve bled to grant me. The last thing I wish is to seem ungrateful. But...blood sows guilt, as we Maartensbecks well know. And I...”
Gaze left steady on Anapurna alone now, her stepping back, regarding him for the first time as anything but a threat. Those fine blue eyes, both sets of them, shining with unshed tears.
“I understand,” she said.
“I have...been damned, all this time, utterly. But what they did saved me...” Nodding down, as Ruhel continued to cry: “She saved me, as she always said she would. I was the one who...tainted it. Do you understand that?”
“I think so, sir.”
But she didn’t move, and neither did he—gaze holding steady while hers slipped sidelong, supplicant, almost. Pleading. For what?
Dee wondered, but only momentarily.
“You want to die, again,” she said, out loud. “For real, this time. But you can’t pull the trigger—damn yourself all over, if you do. That right?” The professor didn’t answer, but didn’t object. Dee nodded at Anapurna. “So you want her to kill you, instead.”
“‘Want’ would be a...strong word.”
“For her too, given she fights monsters and you’re not one anymore. Plus, you’re family.”
(I know a little about that.)
Anapurna stiffened, gun jerking back up, as though challenged. “Never said I wouldn’t,” she snapped, to which Dee shrugged, making a placatory movement: Peace, lady. Managed to get this far without shooting each other—let’s go for the gold, huh?
“Just think maybe it’d go better if it wasn’t either of you,” she said, mainly to Maks. “‘Cause when you’re bent on doing good, doing bad—no matter why—don’t ever seem to help.”
He didn’t bother to nod, but Anapurna did it for him, so...good enough, Dee guessed. Pressed tight to her granddad’s clavicle, Ruhel covered her eyes with both hands and wept on, bitterly. And Dee reached into her sleeve, for real this time—not knowing if Sami was watching, but sure as hell not wanting to check, either. Hoping Chatwin was, though, and attentively, as she cocked back and dug the barrel into his fragile, rehumanized temple.
Been dead a long time, she reminded herself. But: “I’m sorry,” she heard herself tell him, nevertheless. To which he merely smiled, answering, with amazing self-control—